Tuesday, January 15, 2013

We are Authors

We have begun the process of bookmaking in 4k!  This is a very exciting time, as the children discover they are authors just like the authors of their favorite books!  The children are very familiar with what an author and illustrator do.  We have learned that the author write the words to a story and the illustrator creates the illustrations, or pictures, in a book. 
After reading a few different snowmen books, we put them all our on the carpet to explore the covers of the books.  The children discussed what they noticed on each of the covers.  Look at the cover of the book Snowmen at Night.  What do you see? 


  Our class discovered that all the books had a name on them, which we learned was the name of the author and/or illustrator.  They also noticed their were other letters and words on the cover.  They decided those words must be the title of the story, and the title gives us a hint of what the story might be about.  Each cover also had a picture.  The children decided that the picture gives us another hint about what the story is about.  After our discussion about book covers, we tried to create our own covers for our stories! Look at how hard we are working!

 Each child created the cover for their own book!  Each cover had a picture, to give us a hint about their story, and the name of the author/illustrator.  Some children even tried to write letters and words for a title!  Check back soon to see more from our very own authors!


Favorite Animal Graph

Throughout the 4k year we graph many things!  We have graphed our favorite color, the letters in our name, and favorite type of apple to eat.  This week, each child was given the opportunity to be in charge of their own graph.  A few children each day got to walk around the room during free choice time and ask their classmates what their favorite animal was.  They recorded the answers on their graph.  When they were finished collecting their data, they were excited to share what animal got the most votes as well as which animal or animals received the least amount of votes.  Enjoy the following pictures of our graphing adventure!



4k Snowmen

Let is snow, let it snow, let it snow!  As the weather outside got chilly, we created our own snowmen inside!  The 4k children used their fine motor skills to trace three circles on their paper.  A big circle, a medium circle, and a small circle.  Next, we filled in the circles with a shaving cream and glue mix to make puffy paint!



 Each child was given a variety of materials to use to personalize their snowman.  They chose where and how to use the materials.  I love how each snowman reflects each individual we have in our class! 





 To finalize our snowmen, we wrote a sentence about them!  Each child was given the prompt: My snowman likes to... and encouraged to write a word or phrase about what their snowman liked to do!  We talked like turtles so we could hear the sounds in the words we were trying to write and then wrote down the sounds that we could hear!  Stop by and see our snowmen on display in the hallway!